Gaia: Beyond Enlightenment - Conversations - Which is better, Enlightenment or Wisdom?

Re: Which is better, Enlightenment or Wisdom?

http://simpleandbasic.gaia.com — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 03:54:13 GMT

Hey Bill, I am not sure where to post this, I chose here but it also answers my other post "Enlightenment came crashing through the door"...

This is long, really long but so is this thread...!!!!

"coarse sandpiper", "cosmic egocentrism"...whoa...Poor Bill, well at least you admit to knowing it would stir folks up some, stirring is always a good thing anyway, or so I think. I may even be stirring it again as I bring it forward after all this time. Once I saw the original date of inception, I rather felt silly resurrecting it. I will go forth cautiously in the future around here. I mean no harm by bringing this back into space, I just stumbled into the group, felt a connection and zealousness overtook me as usual. It appears Bill you are the only one left willing to ring it around the rosy with me! It is a great thread and as far as I am concerned, it exercises the mind. Your right Bill, asking questions is what it is all about, or so I agree. Here we are, 2008!

So I was right, I changed my mind a hundred times overall throughout the dialogue. Sometimes I agreed, sometimes not, sometimes I liked you and sometimes not! A real roller coaster of ride here! Thanks to all, btw, I mean that, there were some great thoughts.

I now know for sure I don't have a clue what enlightenment is, I don't' think I ever believed myself to know "it" or maybe I did. Therefore, you have cleared this up for me. I guarantee you however; I will ask others for their definition down the road. I do associate it with a feeling more than a theory that is about all I know for now.

This is also a great example and reason why I should stay away from this type of dialogue, too confusing when you hold no absolutes. My New Year resolution is to grow me some absolutes, perhaps, which is my issue, so I have been told...

I agree coldheartedly with you Bill about the excess bullshit, there is so much out there, but it is everywhere. I used to be full of it once, still am but just not loading around so much at present. I sure hope this is the case or else this whole trip was wasted.

You need some background on me, just a bit.

Background: I know no enlightenment systems nor hold no absolutes of council. Am definitely an open being and more than ready to wonder about something new that comes along. I respect all paths chosen and believe this not to be my business of others, mind self is my other golden rule. "I know nothing" is a perspective that works for me and I have taken stand on the following line...that the less I know the better am I. My mission is to dump all that I know, empty self out and start again with nothing. I don't how, why or where this started, (well actually I do) it just works for me, I don't know what model this fits either. Someone up thread alluded to a theory similar of nature and I should gander that. I don't hold absolutes, processes, ideologies, dogma or doctrine or devotions to follow or guide me, just my family. It is the liken of; when lost go back to start and try again, this is how I remember learning to tie my shoes, start from the beginning.

I respect all choices and paths... is MY golden rule.

I DO belong to or am of a culture that was and is influential and can see I still take this as first spin when anything comes along. Meaning that I still hold up all new info against my cultural worldviews, beliefs and values. I DO admit it gets in the way and realized it has stymied my entrance into new realms from time to time. I know that I have rejected certain theories as it has conflicted with my cultural self. I probably still do although I will tell you it doesn't or am totally unaware of it but most importantly to know is that today I am comfortable with the absurd conflicts. (Okay I will tell I am but I am not totally sure, you kicked this one open for me so I need to think about it!)...I think I am...no...I am cool with it...really!

So perhaps I should take back my earlier statement that I have no absolutes, perhaps I do have a few after all. With that admittance I am like goulash pie with my ideologies, a little of this and a little of that and sometimes, they contradict each other like no ones business. It pisses off others so I keep this wrapped up for the most. You are left agitated, insulted or concluding of me...so has been my witness. I am not enough or too much for others. I just have not found my box to fit in. I wanted to, tried desperately for years but it was not out there. I stopped looking. I found my belonging elsewhere, just here hanging with family that is all, nothing major but it is my box. For now...

I don't know if I qualify as your regular person you were looking for Bill. I have some silly degree in Native Studies and Anthropology, that is all, it served me well for the time and purpose. I forgot most of it to be honest but I think I had a really great time while trying to get it. I have had several careers, kids, two marriages, mortgage payments etc, etc,. I have roots growing out of my potatoes that should be composted but I keep walking past them, my lint dryer is full and the garbage is overflowing. Oh and I only paid the minimum on my Visa bill this month and last and the month before...is that the regular type of people you were looking for? You never added any qualifications for your "regular person".

What is my definition of enlightenment? You know Bill, I will be honest that this word hits a sore spot for me. I had a teacher that I had to put up with for two years that used this word in a condescending manner. Her goal in life was to "enlighten" me.

What is enlightenment? Hhhmmmm....See all I got is what I have been taught from a cultural perspective of a teaching transmitted via my native language. I have spun the "cultural thing" around a few times just to be sure. Meaning that I rejected it, questioned it and now returned to it...again! It does not even matter what cultural view it is as my point here is it is a cultural worldview passed down to me so should we not keep this in the spectrum of conversation? My answer might make more sense if we did.

So I get this was a bit of a pissing match and had to really look to find any real information, no big deal. However, I wondered all through this where was the relativity. I found myself missing some "stuff" before I could comfortably pull out my critical eyepiece on any of it. For each answer posted, I wondered what is their background, cosmology, language, place of origin, worldview, religion, ideologies, biography...etc...etc...Where does cultural background come into play here?

As you can see, I am trying to wiggle my absolute in here.

In our need to understand our human selves and whatever enlightenment experience we may encounter, I think we should examine it from a wider angle of relativity. This may assist us equally in the bullshit detecting process or assist us to understand each other more, take your pick. "It" is all connected so should we not examine it from this perspective. You mentioned language and stories but hardly...

"bhakti"...how do you pronounce this anyway? I don't know yet even if I want to know. I had to google 8 times to each new theory brought in...I am feeling terribly out of my league here, you can freely tell me so...no I will admit this one out loud.

"Enlightenment can only be taken?"... Enlightenment can only be taken... Enlightenment can only be taken... Enlightenment can only be taken...hhhhmmmm....I rest, to now wonder upon this or to go shoot hubby the finger, perhaps I will do both!

I do have absolutes so therefore I take back my other statement...enlightenment did not come crashing through my door, I don't have a clue what did!

Another note, just for fun...in my language we have no word for absolute or truth, our language implies that absolute truth is unknowable or only available to the person speaking. I fly with this, it works for me because it is my inherited absolute? Perhaps...but I think it is really cool nonetheless but this is my complete bias shining in! I am not lying either... niwii-debwe

My tag line is nonconformist, it is there for reason and has been all my life, I am trying to lose all my rational...maybe that's the secret????

(Erik...you're a trooper man...!)

As far as my story goes and what the heck happened, all I know and care is it got me here, I was scared into sensibility. I am going to save the entire story; I am still trying to define where to drop it on here. I have been looking for a place to take this story for two years; it may be here online or not. I am a wanna be irrational gal Bill, so I will wait till my rational intuition kicks in before I plop it out!

That was a ton of fun and it gave me a ton of new wonder, I LOVE this place!

How have my absolutes or delusion of non absolutes hindered my growth, or how has my bullshit and lies prevented me from growing and moving on...???

Thanks Bill for stirring my pot and letting me know I am full of shit...seriously...I needed it!

Re: Which is better, Enlightenment or Wisdom?

http://telesterion.gaia.com — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 20:26:44 GMT

Ha ha ha - well, it is meant to be a kind of a trick question.

The trick part is, of course, "better for what?".

Re: Which is better, Enlightenment or Wisdom?

http://simpleandbasic.gaia.com — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 05:29:38 GMT

This should be an interesting read...I am starting from the top and will eventually get to the bottom...great question!

I am not a fan of mulitiple choice questions but I will take (B) Wisdom...but I have a feeling this will get a bit mumbled as I work my way around this all.

Thanks,

Denim

Re: Which is better, Enlightenment or Wisdom?

http://telesterion.gaia.com — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 20:08:47 GMT

I am arguably too clever for my own good, Peter.

However, one has to talk to people where they are, not where one wishes they were.

If everyone is in the dime store, the perfectly said and truest thing spoken in the million-dollar stores does nothing but vibrate a few molecules of nitrogen and oxygen.

This is triage, not true medicine. And I am fully aware of that.

Nor do I expect that any of the third that can bear even a little can survive.

It's the parable of the sower in this real life, the only life you and I will ever have.

And I am watching intently your efforts to speak in the million-dollar store. Tho, it looks like the million-dollar store is still empty.

If you have the cure for my cleverness, cure me if you dare.

Re: Which is better, Enlightenment or Wisdom?

http://Pierre-le-Danois.gaia.com — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 14:32:03 GMT

All of which goes to show that the internet is really good for masturbation.

Now some masturbate to get a little release so they can go on with other matters,

but some just keep on and on and on...

Come on, is this really fun? Is it?

You are too clever for your own good, Bill.

After just a bit of this, I feel like I used to when I discovered I had spent an hour browsing in a dime store.

Re: Which is better, Enlightenment or Wisdom?

http://telesterion.gaia.com — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 00:04:12 GMT

Two questions.

How do you know?

and

Which enlightenment are you referring to?

Re: Which is better, Enlightenment or Wisdom?

http://rosh.gaia.com — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 23:04:58 GMT

yes id like to say that enlightenment is better than wisdom here is my argument one can be wise yet not be enlightened yet one cannot be enlightened and unwise enlightenment implies wisdom yet so much more its like asking which is better spokane washington or the united states well the united states implies spokane washington you cant have spokane washington without the united states because thats where spokane is with the united states you get spokane implicitly spokane comes with the deal you could have of course only spokane and thats fine and well but with spokane plus the rest of the country comes so much more its like asking which is better my brain or my whole body my point is that the whole body is better because you get the brain along with the deal already you can have your cake and eat it too its better to have a million dollars than to have just one love to all

Re: Peak Experiences

http://telesterion.gaia.com — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 00:21:16 GMT

Ahhh, Erik, sad to see you go.

And I was working on such an interesting answer to your question...

Re: Peak Experiences

http://redwoodjedi.gaia.com — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 02:19:43 GMT

Hello Bill-

I am still thinking. Terrible, I know. Or don't know. Hell with it. It would help I guess, if you could, but for not to cheapen your current as yet undefined enlightened state, put a little more out there as to what we should be looking for if looking at all is even necessary. I feel that looking personally, only acts as a distraction. I like what I call, Cerebral Oblivion. I am here, but there is no thought. If I think or move (chicken or the egg?) it's gone. What is more than that? I must feel this. I must evolve to this. I am sorry for the pleas that seem to indicate a direction to go for lack of better questioning technique. What else can one not do if currently not doing anything? I am admittedly perplexed. Enlighten me...

Erik

Re: Peak Experiences

http://telesterion.gaia.com — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 03:22:34 GMT

Erik, I'm thinking we should start a new thread for these stages of the conversation, this thread is long and a bit tangled. I'm not quite sure what the new thread should be called, tho. So, questions... Does "enlightenment" really matter? Less than one would think. It can matter a lot to the individual. To the collective, it is a threat. Is it inevitable? Nope. Is collective consciousness pushing in that direction? Absolutely not. And the unasked question - why do people say things like the questions just asked? Different people have different reasons. Some are blatantly lying. Some are innocently lying. Some are just mistaken. Most say such things because such things have been said, and for no other reason. When they are mistaken, the problem usually arises because people haven't realized that not only are there multiple forms of "enlightenment", but that there are many states which aren't "enlightenment", but are still damned interesting states. So, they mistake one form of "enlightenment" for another, or they mistake a non-enlightened state for "enlightenment".

Re: Peak Experiences

http://redwoodjedi.gaia.com — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 02:04:07 GMT

Ken Wilber, like myself, has had some marvelous peak experiences that he muddles to the point of Spiritual Incoherence because of an avid fascination with his own overblown vocabulary. I will put Winnie-The-Pooh against K-Dub any day. Hmmm, Coddleston Pie vs. the BS of Four Quadrants. It's so overstuffed with needless detail that it is utterly confusing unless you got conned into buying the previous five books like I did. Yup. I admit it. I got strung along. I kept waiting for the prize. The prize is his Swiss account. The bald Boulder Geek is a brilliant con-artist that is just enough right at times to catch the weak minded like myself. That's what I get for using mind instead of discarding it. Don't make anything you have to believe in to exist. Lesson learned. I need nothing to believe in to exist. If I believe, I'm using mind as an identifier intead of the fleshy abacus of tool it really is. Sorry about the off-topic rant on K-Dub, but at least I didn't start it out in all-caps, right Zak? = ) In my needless opinion, Ken Wilber wrote one good book about the dying journey of his first wife and the rest is just fluffy pontification on the topic of how he is the Spiritual equivalent of Einstein. He lost me as soon as he pit a Liberal viewpoint politically as favorable against a Conservative one. Frankly, I think as soon as he identified with any of them he put himself into a dual state which contradicts most of what he is saying most of the time. Hmmmmmmmm. Oh well.

Now, back to you Bill. What do you have to offer? What magnanimously pithy esoterica can you produce as bait to catch a fish like me? Or have I already bitten the hook? (duh, I responded to this thread) Seriously. Does enlightenment even matter really? It's inevidible isn't it? Collective Consciousness is pushing in that direction for lack of a better phrase, right? This weak mind would like to "Know". At worst, I am at square one. At best, I learn something anyway. Not that learning is important...

Coddleston, Coddleston, Coddleston Pie...

Bathe in Light,

Erik

Re: Peak Experiences

http://perfectcircle.gaia.com — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 22:45:03 GMT

Actually Cowboy Ken has his good side.

As I point out in the essay: nothing is all good or all bad.

Only thing though: there are enough bad people to make the bad seem good, and the good hide!

Re: Peak Experiences

http://markwaller.gaia.com — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 15:17:34 GMT

Wow Jewdist! I am eating out of your hand. Speaking of PT Barnum - to paraphrase him:

"There is a seeker born every minute!"

Actually that phrase was not actually uttered by him but by one of his competitors, but it got stuck to him.

Mark

Re: Peak Experiences

http://perfectcircle.gaia.com — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 00:52:19 GMT

http://www.integralworld.net/index.html?ishaq3.html

I hear ya

Re: Peak Experiences

http://telesterion.gaia.com — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 00:15:23 GMT

Talk about saying something unpopular on zaadz, ha ha ha ha ha....

Start in on Andy on they'll have a inquisition. ;-}

Re: Which is better, Enlightenment or Wisdom?

http://jewdist.gaia.com — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 15:24:46 GMT

Plato was wrong about a lot of things. His Platonic Ideal in which anything, a chair, beauty, whatever, could not be perceived directly because we sit in a cave and can only see the shadows of Reality, not its Platonic Ideal. (I always picture "chair" and "beauty" hanging out in the Cosmos with a tag that says "Ideal").

I love what you say about "spiritual fascism". And it's not just what we love/hate about ourselves but also about others.

As for animals, we are animals. Just with larger brain capacity. Interestingly enough, there are insects that have far more advanced systems of communication. Bees tell each other where the pollen is by triangulating the sun, the flower, the hive, and then dance that information to each other.

What hubris we human have, thinking we are the world's guardians. Mother Nature laughs at her latest offspring. Making mistakes is EXACTLY what evolution is. What works survives, what doesn't dies off.

I'm reminded of Prometheus, doomed to eternal pain by Zeus, for having discovered the technology of fire. We build bombs, we will suffer. We build machines and think we have dominion over the planet. Harumph!

It's difficult to work together, because we are not a world community, but groups divided by history, ethnicity, language, territoriality, and the genetic disposition to want our personal DNA to thrive at the expense of somebody else's DNA. Lots of male animals kill the offspring of other males so that their DNA will survive.

Isn't that called war?

Re: Peak Experiences

http://jewdist.gaia.com — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 14:57:36 GMT

Ken Wilber is a master of multi-level marketing. What's up with a guy who uses a 20 year-old picture of his sexy self? What's up with a guy who develops a tiered system for making money, based on his philosophical maunderings? What's up with a guy who couldn't cut it at Medical School and now claims he knows better?

He's a master of the PT Barnum effect, the gullibility of the masses for novelty, freakish exhibits, and that self-deified mumbo jumbo, while he races to the bank.

Don't get me started on this guy.

Re: Which is better, Enlightenment or Wisdom?

http://perfectcircle.gaia.com — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 21:31:46 GMT

You're preaching to the choir, I also think religion sucks. I don't think it could be abolished any time soon though. People may just have to see that it is not too much of use, and then maybe they will discard it.

I look at religion as mythology, metophor and symbiology In other words I incorporate it for seeking knowledge.

Re: Which is better, Enlightenment or Wisdom?

http://telesterion.gaia.com — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 20:03:27 GMT

I don't see the use of any of it, Zak.

I understand, most humans on this planet are imprinted with the religion culture-stream, and this is unlikely to change for thousands of years.

But religious models block "enlightenment", in all it's various forms. No religious person has ever become "enlightened". Religion must end in order for the space needed for "enlightenment" to open.

To say it another way, faith is the ultimate obstacle humans place between themselves and the experience humans call "God".

As for me, I have stained my prayer rug with wine, I have no need of faith.

Re: Which is better, Enlightenment or Wisdom?

http://perfectcircle.gaia.com — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 23:18:06 GMT

Bill religion is based on faith, right. Faith is not knowledge it is in reality, ignorance. The faith hasn't produced yet knowledge. If as you say it is based on revelation, the believers didn't get the revelation, they just have faith in it, that my friend is still ignorance.

They may one day get knowledge. But all religious matrixes are based on not knowing, [faith] how could you deny that. We are not referring to Muhammad, or Buddha, but the reality of religion as the laymen knows it.

That's why religion is based on ignorance, ultimately, in seems to me.

Also however you look at it, any science has to have a foundation of some established knowledge, even in order to establish any hypothesis.

How is one going to establish the reality of Atomic energy, if they don't have a sound knowledgeable established basis already in molecular theory, or advanced chemistry? That's established knowledge.

That's why science is ultimately dependent on established knowledge.

2 Adams

As for the Adamic designations, I probably shouldn't have even told you about that because it is a part of a larger tapestry of cosmic theory

Although I am aware of the potential dangers of ideas [I even criticize Ken Wilber and his 2^nd tier stuff] like this, it is a religious notion that therefore most likely would render it harmless.

Also as I stated the Transcendent Adams are very rare, that's why enlightenment is rare,

One more thing. In most spiritual cosmologies, or theosophies they ALL recognize that there is an elite. Though it is suggested that this concept be not over emphasized, for the obvious reasons.

Check out my profile,[ when you get a free minute] and see my entire doctrine of the 6 transcendent natures, plus [1] in which the Adamic 2 I mentioned are a part of.